Minimum lock on-range for missiles

[Captainredfox]

Lets be honest, missiles overshadow other weapon types in many circumstances. They can be long-range or short-range and are guided most of the time and therefore take less forethought to use. I propose a a simple, customizable fix to help make other weapons as viable as missiles.

Minimum lock-on range​

• This change would overall make missiles a long range weapons instead of multi-purpose and make short range weapons more powerful at their jobs in turn.
  
• Having a minimum range would make small, fast ships more useful as they could come in close to the ship
  
• It would make anti-personnel turrets a more practical defense against boarders than simply firing a barrage of swarmers and having them loop back around to the boarders. This would also make boarding somewhat more fair since you could attack the defenses
• Weapon combinations could change the minimum range, say missile-beam would make it farther or missile-missile could be closer
• You could still dumb-fire the missiles if the target is too close, so with some skill it would be possible to defend yourself in a missile-only ship
• Would encourage tactical placement of missile turrets so they would have maximum range from the target

This could all be customized or disabled in the config, as any balance change should be

 

[NeonSturm]

Minimum distance is a golden nugget, not only for missiles but all high-alpha weapons.

If stations would have more range, and large ships more range than smaller ones, a missiles (or death-rays aka pulse-beams) minimum distance could also increase.

This would give small ships another way to fight big ships (from close distance) without anti-small turrets.
And it help prevent big ships being outranged and hold at max range by small ones (small ships could use limited-time cloak to get close).
​

Have you thought about weapons that break through a charged shield before disabling it?

Imagine, for missiles only 50% of your current shield value is used (remaining doesn't count and neither takes damage from that hit & Swarms have the value divided by their count) In turn, they would do less damage.

This would distinguish high-alpha-weapons (which missiles essentially are) from high-fire-rate ones, as these don't do enough damage/hit to use this exception case.
It would also give special use for high-alpha pulse-beams (aka death-rays), not just fix the missile problem.
​

 

[Captainredfox]

pins

So, in other words do you mean that missiles couldn't take the shield down in one hit to encourage the use of other weapons to finish the job?

 

[Master_Artificer]

I don't think this is a problem for missile beams and missile pulses. Already in close range combat the twists and jukes combined with the long arming time break my locks more often than not when separated by less than a few hundred meters. And at that point the person with the better armor and cannon setup is going to win maybe over 50% of the time.

All in all, unless you like to fight sitting still, this in practice is not too big of a problem.

 

[NeonSturm]

So, in other words do you mean that missiles couldn't take the shield down in one hit to encourage the use of other weapons to finish the job?

I meant more that a single array can't take out the shields (also from other alpha weapons like beam-pulse).

It's essentially as if they are fighting a 50% weaker shield, but in turn the weapons don't deliver so much damage to the hull.
But swarmers or multi-hitters like beams need to have "100% - (50% * hits/count)" to work.
​

They would stick out more as hit+run_and_hit-again weapons and still be balanced.

I also like ships having about 30% shield (compared to hull hp) max so that alpha weapons don't dominate the game, but this is only a personal preference. I am not 100% sure whether I will find better solutions to what I want, mainly because of ion-hardeners and shield-supply combat-regen mechanisms.
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I don't think this is a problem for missile beams and missile pulses. Already in close range combat the twists and jukes combined with the long arming time break my locks more often than not when separated by less than a few hundred meters. And at that point the person with the better armor and cannon setup is going to win maybe over 50% of the time.

All in all, unless you like to fight sitting still, this in practice is not too big of a problem.

But heatseakers and dumb-fire are. Basically all high-alpha-weapons in fights with uneven ship weights.

 

[Captainredfox]

...when separated by less than a few hundred meters.

I don't mean a minimum distance of several hundred meters, I mean like a kilometer or more. This is especially true for small ships which are impossible to flank.